


can't wait for the nights with you

by jill_ian



Series: also on tumblr [7]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: M/M, and they were neighbors, oh my god they were neighbors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-23
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:27:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jill_ian/pseuds/jill_ian
Summary: Steve was 17 and there was a moving truck outside.A moving truck, a beat-up Cadillac, and a shiny blue Camaro.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Series: also on tumblr [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623685
Comments: 15
Kudos: 199





	can't wait for the nights with you

Steve was 15 and the neighbors were moving out.

He’d watched them pack from his spot on the roof. The little spot right outside his bedroom window. Allowed him to see down into the living room of the next house over. It was already piled high with boxes when his mom let the statement slip at dinner one night.

“The Upton’s are moving to the Hamptons,” she’d said.

Steve couldn’t remember a single time either of his parents had ever spoken to Mr. or Mrs. Upton other than the occasional _hello_ while crossing paths to get the mail. Couldn’t quite understand why the news was important enough for her to waste her breath over.

His father didn’t. He just hummed.

Two weeks later, the house was empty.

Steve was 16 and they still didn’t have a neighbor off to the right hand side.

He’d watched his fair share of Open Houses from his spot on the roof. Thought about taking a look himself on more than one occasion. Considered what it would be like to jump over onto the little patch of roof that matched his own, how easy it would be to open the window and climb inside. The thought was tempting, but the small gap between houses made his palms sweat. Was enough to keep him on his side of the line.

So he just watched. Watched couple after couple after couple, one upturned nose after the next, walk through and leave. Never saw the same face twice.

Maybe that was the beer’s fault, the weed’s, made his memory all hazy and weird. Mostly, out there on the roof, staring at the stars, he thought maybe it was the house’s fault.

Big empty houses could be intimidating. He should know. He lived in one.

Steve was 17 and there was a moving truck outside.

A moving truck, a beat-up Cadillac, and a shiny blue Camaro.

He watched them unpack from his spot on the roof. Sipped a beer, slow, careful, kept his eyes on the living room below.

From what he could see, they were a small family, normal enough. A quiet father with stern eyes. A young mother with bright orange hair. A small daughter with a head of her own to match.

If he hadn’t been watching closely, he might have thought that was it. Father, mother, daughter. Small family of three. Quaint and picturesque to fit the small-town Indiana mold.

Except, that wasn’t it.

There was a fourth person walking around the house. Somewhere. What had to be a son. Broad shoulders, blond hair. Hands curled around cardboard boxes so tight they creased beneath his fingers, lined with rings.

The other three, the picture-perfect three, spent their time in the living room, hanging curtains, arranging vases on shelves, but the son, he only came into the room to pick up another box, to drag it somewhere else. Spent his time somewhere else. Out of the frame.

Time passed. Steve had another beer. Watched the lights go out one by one by one until the house was as dark as it had been these last two years. Dark and desolate.

Steve was 17 and they finally had neighbors again.

“The Hargrove-Mayfield’s,” he learned, as per his mother’s explanation a few nights later. “From California.”

“That’s cool,” Steve said. Hardly even a hum of a noise as he pushed at the broccoli on his plate. Had to punch at the silence somehow when his father didn’t.

The explanation ended there, dinner went back to cold silence.

Later that night, he climbed out onto the roof, the late-June air outside his bedroom window warm, perfect. His parents would be gone again in the morning and he’d bought a brand new bottle of whiskey off Tommy, could hardly even wait to drink it beneath a blanket of stars. There was no breeze to rattle the trees, the slow burn of alcohol cut at the back of his throat, and if he squinted hard enough, he could see the Big Dipper.

Life was lighter. Summer was here.

The world outside was dark, calm, but the light from the living room next door drew his attention like a moth to a flame. The dull hum of noise. The cadence an argument, volume that matched.

There wasn’t much he could see. Mostly just hands. Young hands. Lined with rings and waving like mad. On the opposite side of the room, the hands were stronger, rougher. A father’s hands. Balled into fists. Unmoving.

Until suddenly they were. Moving. Grabbing a vase off the shelf to throw against the wall. Cracked it, shattered it clean. Sent shards and flowers to the floor with a violent crash.

The crash gave way to silence, silence to flat air. To empty space. Disappeared and faded into the light. Into the house.

For two years, the house next door had been empty. Dead. Lifeless. Now it was full of fire, with hands that dripped kerosene and a dark rosewater stain that licked at the wall like flames.

When Steve closed his eyes, he could hear sirens.

When he opened them again, he could hear the telltale flick of the locks on the window across from his. Watched a hand lined with rings pull it up, open.

Steve watched him, lazy, hazy from whiskey as he-the son-climbed out the window, shut it behind him. Faced the yard with a heavy breath that Steve might have seen if the air’d had any kind of chill to it.

It wasn’t like it was weird. He knew the kid had seen him, they’d caught each other’s eyes as he sat down on the little patch of roof that mirrored Steve’s, pulled a cigarette out of his pocket before he completed the full motion.

The kid had even spoken to him after he’d placed the cigarette between his lips. After he’d felt at his pockets with ring lined hands and grabbed at his thighs with well-practiced intent. Voice low in pitch, in volume.

“Got a light?” he asked.

“No,” Steve said, shook his head, doubted the kid could see it against the night sky, the black tiles that pillowed his head.

The kid’s laugh was sharp, humorless. A little mean.

“Jesus.” He took the cigarette out from between his lips and stuck it behind his ear. “’Course you don’t,” he mumbled, rubbed a hand that glinted gold against the moonlight over his face. “Fuckin’ hick town. Of _course_ you don’t.”

Steve sat up, slow when he felt his cheeks heat, felt something irritated, annoyed flood up his chest. He took another long sip of the whiskey, winced around it, made sure to feel it burn all the way down before he screwed the cap back on.

“Here.”

Thoughtless. He threw the bottle over the gap before the kid had his head fully turned in his direction, caught it with an ease, an effortlessness Steve could admire.

For all this kid knew, Steve was a stranger, an idiot that laid on the roof of his house in the middle of the night, but he didn’t hesitate to unscrew the cap. To wrap his lips around the bottle and tip his head back, to close his eyes and take a smooth drink.

Silent. Steve just watched.

The kid threw it back over after another even swig, but he kept his mouth shut. Made it clear he didn’t have anything more to say.

That might have been the first time, but it was far from the last.

Steve was 17 and the new neighbors had a habit of getting loud.

The situations were always similar. Steve would watch from the roof, hear the phantom hum of an argument, prepare for the locks to undo, for the window to open once the argument gave way to silence. To him.

“Billy,” he’d said after the fourth time, after Steve had thrown him the beer he’d convinced himself was _just an extra_ when he’d grabbed it on the way out.

“Steve,” he replied, didn’t flinch when the can cracked a few feet away. Billy’s eyes were on him-blue, he had blue eyes, Steve realized-as he took a sip.

And so it went.

Steve was 17, Billy would be 17 next month, and apparently, he wasn’t the only one that preferred stars to the interior of a big house.

“Know anything about stars?” Billy asked him one clear night in July, when the moon was bright and Steve’s watch told him it was nearing 3 AM.

“No,” he said, honest. “Do you?”

“Not a clue.”

Steve laughed. It was easy to laugh with Billy. He’d cried out on the roof more times than he’d ever admit out loud, but he never laughed.

Billy was funny when he wasn’t an asshole, when he wasn’t filled to the brim with angry red, when his temper had calmed and argument-born adrenaline had all but disappeared.

“My dad’s a dickhead,” was the only explanation he’d ever offered. Let it slip after five weeks and half a bottle of cheap vodka that they’d been tossing back and forth. Was quick enough to cover it with a quip that Steve didn’t have to answer, didn’t have to know how.

He could just laugh. So he did.

Steve was 17 and he wasn’t sure he’d ever laughed so much in his life.

He didn’t laugh that night in August, though. The one that changed things.

He’d been in his room, had the window open to allow the air to circulate. The shouts that came when the sun went down didn’t surprise him, nor did the strong, angry sets of hands he saw arguing when he climbed out and sat on the roof. To wait.

It was the absence of a bare hand, raised, the flash of an elbow, pulled back, a fist that hooked right to left that made his breath catch.

The hands lined with rings, covered in blood when they came back into the frame.

Steve felt his heart hit the ground.

Billy’s lip was split when he climbed through the window not five minutes later, blood a fat line down his chin.

He didn’t sit once the window was closed behind him. Not even a _hey_.

Didn’t need one when he was already at the edge of the roof.

“What happens if I do this?” he asked, gestured across the gap between houses, to the space where Steve was sitting. “If I jump over. Is your roof gonna cave in under my ass or what?”

“No,” Steve said, confused, hated how much red there was covering Billy’s face, his hands.

“Okay.” Billy nodded, eyed Steve, the space around him. Took a hard breath in and then out. “Back up.”

Steve didn’t need to be told twice.

Billy jumped the gap without another word, without hesitation. Landed on his feet with a dull thud, a hint of a wince that pulled at the corners of his lips.

The weight of his body knocked into Steve’s when he sat down next to him, heavy, careless.

The blood down his chin was so much worse up close. Deep, dark, dripped a thick shade of red down his tanned skin. Steve had to ball his hand in the hem of his shirt to keep from reaching out to wipe at it.

“Billy?”

His eyes were closed. His chest was almost heaving, up and down and up and down harsh, rapid.

“Yeah?” He sounded breathless. Different.

Steve didn’t bother asking him if he was okay. Decided to take a leap instead.

“Do you wanna come inside?” he asked, watched when the question made Billy open his eyes, revealed a cool shade of blue that seemed to steam against the red, the blood on his face. “You’re bleeding like crazy, man. I mean, I could-I have stuff for that. That could help you clean up.”

Billy swallowed hard, considering. Was slow to shake his head. “Don’t wanna bug you.”

“You’re not bugging me,” he insisted, knocked his shoulder into Billy’s when he didn’t move. “I mean it. Come on.”

Steve stood up, held his hand out. An offer. Billy eyed it. Eyed him.

Took it without a word, let Steve pull him up. Let Steve help him in through the window and lock it behind them.

Steve was 17 and he’d do anything to protect him- _Billy_ \- from the house next door. The monster that lived in the house next door.

Anything.

**Author's Note:**

> based on the dialogue prompt, "What happens if I do this?"
> 
> find me over on tumblr! @holdenduckfield


End file.
